Leap Motion: Control your PC through air gestures

Jul. 23, 2013
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The Leap Motion Airspace app store / Ed Baig for USA TODAY

by Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY

by Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY

NEW YORK -- You're not about to replace your mouse, track pad, keyboard or even touch-screen as the chief ways to control your computer. But then you start using the new Leap Motion Controller and - at least in some circumstances - you can imagine relegating those other devices to the bench.

Using the compact Leap Motion box, I was able reach out into the open space in front of my computer and pluck a digital harp, manipulate a three-dimensional rendering of molecular structures, dissect a frog and - in the popular game of the same title - Cut The Rope. I didn't make physical contact with the computer or any other devices.

Leap Motion is a gesture-driven peripheral for PCs and Macs that I've been fascinated with ever since the South By Southwest Interactive conference in March, where I had my first hands-on - nope, make that hands-above - experience with the clever motion controller. Though my experience at home with Leap Motion wasn't perfect, I'm no less intoxicated not only by what it can already do, but by what it promises to do in the future.

For now, you can draw or paint with your fingers, mold 3-D objects, or explore Google Earth through hand gestures. You can interact using objects, too.

Today, Leap Motion finally starts shipping to customers who preordered it for $79.99, considerably cheaper than the $249.99 Microsoft Kinect sensor with which Leap Motion is inevitably compared. Leap Motion reaches Best Buy stores July 28. The controller was originally supposed to ship in May.

The smallish (0.5 by 1.2. by 3-inch) rectangular unit plugs into the USB ports on a PC or Mac - both long and short proprietary USB cables are supplied. Once in place, the controller can detect even the subtlest hand and finger movements, anywhere inside an interaction area that goes about two feet above the controller, two feet out to either flank (150 degree angle) and a depth of two feet on each side (120 degree angle). You can use multiple hands and fingers, depending on the gestures required in the specific apps that work with the controller. For that matter, another person can stick their hands into this invisible cone of detection, too, and have the computer respond, provided the hands aren't somehow overlapping in space.

Inside the controller are two camera sensors and a pair of infrared LEDs, but the real wizardry arrives with the software. Leap Motion claims an accuracy level of up to 1/100th of a millimeter, and for the most part, I found it responsive, though a couple of the apps that work with it crashed in my tests on an iMac, and at least one lagged a bit. Figuring out and mastering the gestures within certain apps may take some trial and error - at times the interaction gets a bit finicky.

You can find compatible apps inside the aptly named Airspace store. Many are free, though others fetch 99 cents or more. Leap Motion has around 75 apps, a modest but reasonably diverse sum. Some apps work on PCs and Macs, some just on one platform or the other.

The Airspace store is nicely laid out, with sections devoted to music & entertainment apps, creative tools, science, education, productivity & utilities, and other categories. In the "experimental" apps section, you'll find Touchless for Mac and Touchless for Windows, free apps that let you create a "virtual track pad" in the air for interacting with your computer. I tried the Mac version but didn't exactly excel at it right away. As I wrote this review inside Microsoft Word, I was able to scroll up or down by moving my entire hand towards the computer screen, then raising it up or down, but it was just as easy to manipulate the track pad the old fashion way. Through Touchless, you can do a "click" gesture by pointing a single finger towards the screen.

I didn't quite master the $2.99 Swoosh DJ app from a developer called Just Add Music Media, either. But I had a good time with it, anyway. Working in tandem with the music grooving inside iTunes, Swoosh simulates a spinning vinyl disc. Through gestures and movements, you can create reverb effects, or pause and restart a song. But for some reason, whenever I tried playing songs in iTunes after using Swoosh, the volume within iTunes was turned all the way down.

I also had fun trying out the $3.99 Frog Dissection simulation app from Emantras, which lets you explore the inner organs of the amphibian wielding virtual scissors, scalpels and forceps - mercifully, without formaldehyde or a mess.

I can't say it's easier reading The New York Times via their free Leap Motion app, than through more traditional methods. In fact, you feel slightly silly twirling your fingers in the air to navigate from one article to another, pointing and holding your finger to select what to read, and drawing clockwise circles to scroll up or counterclockwise circles to scroll down. When you're done reading the piece, you shake your entire hand to escape, which isn't natural.

For now, you'll need the Leap Motion controller itself to exploit the company's technology. But Leap Motion has struck deals with Asus and Hewlett-Packard to embed 3-D motion control into machines from those computer makers.

During South by Southwest, Leap Motion Marketing Vice President Michael Zagorsek told me that the company hoped to make the user interface disappear altogether. "I'm not clicking on something to do something else, I'm not touching something to do something else. There is no interface, it's just me represented here," Zagorsek said.

You'll still rely on the mouse and keyboard most of the time. But with Leap Motion, you won't always have to.